Pour yourself a drink and join us online for our first virtual Walker member event! This exclusive digital “tour” will explore works and themes in the exhibition An Art of Changes: Jasper Johns Prints, 1960–2018. Attendees are encouraged to ask questions throughout the presentation and mingle with fellow attendees in the chat box. It’s the Walker you know and love, brought right to your own home.
On Fracture and Fraternity: The Many Faces of Jasper Johns
Art historian Isabelle Loring Wallace takes a close look at the recurring motif of the fractured face in Jasper Johns's art, revealing references as disparate as Pablo Picasso's Woman in a Straw Hat, a drawing made by a schizophrenic girl in the 1950s, and a slouching demon in Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece.
America and its Afterimage: Jasper Johns, Flags, and Memorial Day
Jasper Johns's Flags (1967–1968) invites viewers to look at two US flags: one in green, black, and orange, the other in grayscale. After gazing on the upper flag then looking at a dot on the gray flag, viewers should see the time-honored red, white, and blue, but only as an afterimage. "What makes this work so compelling," writes Walker Interpretation Fellow Alexandra Nicome in a Memorial Day reflection, "is the simultaneous awe and intimacy we get to experience with this shared symbol. In Johns’s print, a commonplace icon only exists in its 'true' form when I make it in my mind."
How the Walker Art Center Acquired Every Print Jasper Johns Ever Made
In 1987, a New York gallery contacted the Walker with an extraordinary offer: an opportunity to purchase 317 prints by Jasper Johns—everything the artist had produced up to that point. No public institution in the world owned a complete collection of graphic work by Johns—who, it turns out, was the unnamed seller behind the collection. As we open An Art of Changes: Jasper Johns Prints, 1960–2018, curator Joan Rothfuss looks at this extraordinary body of work by an American icon.
